


A quick succession of busy nothings

by felix814



Category: Sprig Muslin - Georgette Heyer
Genre: F/M, Introspection, Letters, Marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 12:38:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13054155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/felix814/pseuds/felix814
Summary: Hester receives a letter, and spends the day processing.





	A quick succession of busy nothings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DaisyNinjaGirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaisyNinjaGirl/gifts).



The letter crumpled slightly in Hester’s fingers. She realized that she was trembling, just a little, and gravely reminded herself not to be so foolish. There is nothing here that should distress her; just the opposite. Carefully, she unclenched her hand and smoothed out the paper, gently tracing the crossed lines of words with light fingertips. 

Nothing about this news is unexpected, either. She should . . . she should get dressed. Were there any other letters she needed to read at the moment?

Conscientiously, she picked through the small pile on her breakfast tray. A bill for shoes, an invitation to Lady Danvers’ ball next week; of course, this would be the coming-out party for her next to eldest daughter. Elizabeth. A grand event it was to be, she had heard. The Danvers were opening the great ballroom at Moorgate House for the occasion, and the Duke of Clarence was supposed to put in an appearance, not that Gareth particularly cared for the man. Still, it would not do to refuse. What else? A note from her sister Maria asking Hester accompanying her family party to Vauxhall Gardens. ‘A merciful act’ Maria called it; of course she would be exhausted at present, with her two littlest ones under three years-- 

She became aware that she was not any more calm than she was a few moments earlier.

With some resolution, Hester pushed the tray with the letters and her barely-touched breakfast from her lap, and rose from bed, wrapping her dressing gown securely around her. 

Today is a busy day. There’s a long-promised visit to make to her sister Anne in the morning, and the ball at the Wrightleys in the evening. And of course dear Hildebrand will be in the house all day, most likely, and she must--be ready to face everyone. 

Slowly, methodically, she breathed in and out, her gaze unfocused and unreadable.

***** 

“Thank heaven you’ve come! At last!”

The foyer of Anne’s house looked like a cross between the back room of a fashionable London modiste and the yard of an upscale inn on a busy London road. Boxes in every pastel shade loomed in haphazard, and, to Hester’s critical eye, unsteady, stacks, while servants darted busily between them, dragging various items of luggage and great dusty chests from an impressively sized pile in the middle of the room. Anne’s husband, Sir Winslow, stood next to the hall-table, clutching a glass of some kind of restorative liquid and glaring balefully at the chaos.

Anne effusively came forward to take Hester’s arm. “My dear, you can’t imagine the kind of morning we’ve had so far -- and only 11 o’clock! But there is simply so much to do.”

She drew Hester brightly and inexorably past the scowling face of her husband, to whom Hester could only bid a brief ‘Good morning’, and who, indeed, looked as if he neither especially noted nor cared for her arrival. 

“I don’t know how much time I can give you, since as you find us, we are hopelessly busy with the arrangements--and yet I do earnestly desire your assistance, or at least, the assistance of your charming husband,” Anne chatted gaily as she led Hester to a sofa in the back parlour, “but I am ahead of things! You do not yet know our news!”

“Indeed not,” said Hester mildly, “although from your demeanour I assume that it is a happy event which has put the house into such a frenzied state.”

“The most happiest of events! Dear Oliver has proposed!”

Hester groped for understanding. “And dear Oliver is?”

Anne impatiently twitched her skirts aside as she reached for the vase of orchids on the low table in front of them, restlessly re-arranging a drooping blossom and ruthlessly wrenching off a few slightly faded leaves. 

“Oh, I wish you would attend more closely to matters of import within your own family! Really, Hester -- it’s bad enough that darling Sir Gareth keeps you cooped up at the country house for so much of the year. You have not been seen very often at this house, either, since you came to town, and it is a charming place, if not in the best situation. I must say, I don’t know why you should be ashamed of visiting us!”

Frequently attempting to stop the flow of angry eloquence from her sister, Hester finally succeeded in breaking in,

“Anne, how can you say so, honestly -- I am sure I have been here more than a dozen times in the last month. And--”

“I suppose you have been obliged to look after those house-guests of yours, like that tedious Mr Ross.”

“He is a great friend of both Sir Gareth and myself,” Hester said warmly, clasping Anne’s hand in hers. Sensing that it would be fruitless to continue in this vein, she seized the discarded topic of conversation, and gave her sister an encouraging smile. “But you were telling me of Mr Oliver’s proposal?”

Anne obviously relaxed a little, sighing pleasantly as she squeezed Hester’s hand in turn. 

“Oliver Drayton, who has been paying his addresses to Charlotte these past weeks, has been so good as to make her an offer. In her first season, no less! Only seventeen and she catches the eye of one of the wealthiest young prospects -- oh, it’s enough to melt a mother’s heart.”

Hester diplomatically said nothing. She did recall now, a rather stolid and serious-looking young man who had accompanied the family party on several excursions. She had barely exchanged more than a handful of words with him, constrained as she usually was on these ventures, into helping Nurse with the smaller children. He had seemed intelligent, though, and he was said to be a rising man in the Foreign Office. Charlotte might indeed be fortunate. She felt something tighten in her chest. Anne was still talking.

“So we must make everyone ready, as soon as possible. I do admit, it seems just a trifle hard on the darling girl, that things should be so rushed, and I do not see why the Ambassador should need to leave for the West Indies before the summer, but it is so, and Oliver must of course be in his party. With his new bride!” Anne was clearly on the edge of an immense pride in her daughter’s accomplishment, which warred with an immense frustration at the inconvenience to her own plans.

Hester blinked and smiled, cautiously. “She will make a beautiful bride,” she ventured, thinking to calm her volatile sister. 

Anne beamed. “It is a blessing, is it not, that she is so fair? We are in the process of taking down all the boxes from the attics to salvage the best things for her use, but I insisted on buying her just a few new pieces of apparel--”

“Just a few,” Hester said drily, remembering the toppling towers in the front hall.

“And she looks ravishing in her bridal clothes,” Anne sailed on, unheeding, “like an angelic creature, in pearls! It is so paltry, I think, when a bride does not appear the model of innocence. That is the true aesthetic ideal, for such an occasion.”

Hester thought about her own wedding-day, acknowledging, as she felt she would do for the rest of her life, that she had never been remotely capable of living up to that ideal. It was true that she had had less lines on her face then, and her hair had not yet begun to show silver at the roots, as it was beginning to do. But she knew she had been plainer and -- older, compared to so many of the dazzling beauties that she had seen tripping down the aisle in the intervening years. Best not to think about it, on the whole.

“So charming,” she said. 

They were interrupted suddenly by the butler at the door, quietly coughing into his fist. 

“Mrs Bradshaw is here, my lady.”

Anne jumped up with a mild exclamation. “Oh no! And I had counted on being free to sort through the linens this morning -- well, perhaps she won’t stay long.”

A little concerned that Mrs Bradshaw might have heard these last uncivil words, Hester came forward abruptly to greet the lady, now entering somewhat magisterially amidst a hubbub of noise from the hall. 

“What a commotion,” she remarked, disapprovingly, “are you aware, Lady Mortimer, that there is a circus in your house?”

“It is a most trying day, my dear Mrs Bradshaw,” Anne said peevishly, “and if you’ll excuse me momentarily, I must just step out to see what is the matter.”

Blushing a little for her sister, Hester attempted a conversational gambit she was certain would soothe the woman’s ruffled feathers.

“Your husband, I trust he is well?”

The next ten minutes were lost to a round recitation of Mr Bradshaw’s merits, witty sayings, and sententious opinions on domestic affairs, each phrase accompanied with a glowing look of self-satisfaction from the lady.

Privately, and a little guiltily (since Mrs Bradshaw was, after all, a good, well-meaning woman with a charitable interest in Hester), she thanked God that, whatever else might be the case, she had never been as fatuously adoring of her own husband.

“And did I mention, my dear,” continued Mrs Bradshaw brightly, “that he is soon to be awarded a post on the General’s staff? Many a more senior man was considered for it, but I knew -- as I told my sister Sophy -- how simply no-one else but dear Charles could have been preferred--”

Hester inwardly sighed, and looked surreptitiously at the clock. Surely it had already been a quarter of an hour?

“Our eldest son now being out of the nursery, I thought that the room next to the library on the second floor of the East wing should be redecorated -- for a study, you know, somewhere where he can do his work without interruption, and prepare for his Oxford examinations in peace.”

“I thought, surely,” said Hester, confused, “that Stephen was only eleven years old--” 

“Ah, you too think I am too forward!” exclaimed Mrs Bradshaw triumphantly. “As several of my acquaintance were as well -- telling me that I should wait for several more years before beginning these plans -- but Charles, you know, he enters into my feelings so completely that he didn’t even wait to hear the whole of my designs, but just told me to do whatever was needed and send the bills to his secretary. He always agrees with me about the children; we hardly have to speak on the subject, he trusts me so implicitly! And he is so busy these days, at his governmental work, that I scarcely see him in the house as it is. Oh, we understand each other so well! I daresay no couple was ever so well matched. But my dear, is there something the matter? You look a little unwell.” 

Hester blinked away the momentary inattention. Clearly, the social demands of the moment were not an effective screen against her own--preoccupation. But one’s time did not belong to oneself after all. She made an effort to smile. 

“Tell me more about your children,” she invited, beginning to feel a small pain in her chest. Really, she must make more of an effort to be well. The day was only just begun.

***** 

“Am I interrupting?”

Hester guiltily looked up from where she had been briefly resting her head in her hands.

“Not at all! It’s good to see you -- I was half afraid that you would camp out in the library all day.”

Hildebrand came further into the room, carrying under one arm a large case from which several pages seemed to be escaping, many of which appeared to be covered from margin to margin in scratched writing.

“I know,” he said ruefully, “it does happen sometimes, that I take up a book to read for just an hour after lunch, and then it is suddenly nightfall.”

“Sitting where Amanda calls the Reliable Resting Place for Hildebrand Ross -- that little table tucked between the alcoved in the library. I hope you don’t mind her terrible phrasing.”

Colouring faintly, he took her hand and pressed it warmly. “Not at all! I gather she mentioned it in a letter to you? She writes to me often, you know — not that she should, of course, but she does complain of having no decent company in Belgium and I think, is rather unoccupied at present, with Neil gone for a month or two, so it seems a little hard for her not to continue our friendship by letter.”

At this he smiled uncertainly, with a clear sense of doubt in his face. Hester sympathized with the difficulties attendant on those who wanted to pursue the delights of friendship at the risk of running afoul of social convention. She immediately responded with an encouraging touch to his wavering hand. 

“Amanda mostly breaks convention, I think, in the service of her better virtues. I doubt your correspondence could be of any material danger, although,” she warned him, mildly, “I would not let your masters at the College into your confidence.”

He sat in the chair next to her, fumbled the case onto his lap and carefully, reverently, drew out a manuscript which appeared, to Hester’s eyes, liberally festooned with ink blotches, crossings-out, diagrams of a proscenium stage, clumsily drawn pictures of — was that a heart? Dripping blood? — in addition to copious amounts of writing in a large but enthusiastic hand. 

“I have been working on something important -- something that she will appreciate receiving, I am sure, even in draft form. You can see here,” he said eagerly, pointing to a particular set of pages more messy than the others, “how I have rewritten the part on the execution of Anne Boleyn to include these responses from the spectators, for, as you remember, the severed head of the lady was said to speak to the watching crowd after it had been removed, or at least,” here he laughed a little self-consciously, and traced his fingers nervously over several somewhat botched visual representations of the Boleyn head, “attempt to speak, for my research on the subject has been, shall we say, a little inconclusive, but it is fairly certain — or have you,” be broke off and fixed her with a helplessly keen expression, “have you come across some useful reading on the subject?”

There were many worthy histories of the Tudor monarchs in the household library, Hester considered, and she had certainly perused those which seemed to be more or less accurate (that is, drawn from historical accounts from the period itself and which were not the product of retired parliamentary officials bent on establishing evidence of their family’s involvement in significant affairs of the nation), but, she reflected, they had not included a wealth of information on severed heads and the verbal capacities thereof. 

Possibly a grievous oversight among historians, she mused to herself. Undoubtedly, had they had such a book as children, it would have made her brother more inclined to pay attention to his lesson. Anne, too. It could be a profitable model for a new curriculum, she decided, smiling benignly upon Hildebrand, and giving him a brief shake of her head. History as Gothic Literature.

“But there is still much trouble to be had with the earlier scene,” he said, momentarily abandoning this exciting issue. “Where she asks for her daughter Elizabeth to be brought to her in prison. Of course, it is hard to see her as anything but an unnatural mother, but I need something of the pathos, to balance the torture scene in the third act. What motivation do you think she might have had, for wishing to see her child, at this point? None of my research indicates that she cared much for the Princess Elizabeth during her infancy.”

He was not really attending to any answer she might make, lost in his own speculation.

“Yes,” said Hester slowly and thoughtfully, “she would have longed for a child.”

“A male heir,” added Hildebrand distractedly, sifting through several pages of the manuscript, “the princess Elizabeth was a welcome indication that the queen could bear children, of course, but the son was the important thing. He didn’t manage to get one until the third wife, which I imagine would have been very frustrating,” he brightened slightly, looking up, “and there’s a very good verse drama one of the Magdalen fellows came out with the other year, about the pathetic death of Queen Jane, and how the King swore that he would be buried with her as the mother of his only son, although naturally he was already thinking of his next wife--”

Quietly, Hester, while carefully smoothing out a wrinkle in her skirts, said, “she would have longed for any child.”

Confused, Hildebrand cocked his head a little, puzzling at her. “Queen Jane . . . ?”

“Anne.” 

“Well, to continue the Tudor line--”

“To keep him. King Henry, I mean. He had already discarded one wife, and Anne was not connected to royal European powers, or especially popular within England. She must have felt nervous of being, ah, abandoned for policy. The ground always unsteady beneath her feet.”

He said nothing, but looked away briefly, as if uncertain of what to say, then turned back and smiled cautiously at her. “She is a Romantic figure. I have not considered as yet -- but there should be a great speech from her, about her love for Henry. It does not seem reasonable -- I mean, to take the stance in this work that she was a, a witch or anything so monstrous. If she truly loved him, and I see no reason why should should not have. . .”

“No reason,” murmured Hester calmly. 

“I will write a monologue for her, to be placed in the prison-scene. Where she thinks about her long history with the King, her past wishes about their marriage -- where she wonders how events might have turned out, had he been more faithful. How happy she could have been, with him.”

“Yes,” Hester said. “You will do it justice, I am sure.” 

*****

“Something wrong?”

She looked up. He was at the door, still wearing his hat and coat despite Cliff looming silently and disapproving in the hall beyond, smiling wearily, gentle humour lighting his bright eyes. 

“Yes, I’ve become quite tired of the social necessities. Such a poor creature I am, I know! To be quite done up with London bustle, and it is only May!” Hester felt herself sink back into the cushions, a little more relaxed and suddenly, more cheerful.

Her mock-severe voice clearly did not hide all the strain she was feeling, as he frowned a little, concern sharpening his features. “This Season is proving more tedious than last year,” he agreed, stepping a little away from the door-jamb and letting Cliff at last lift the greatcoat from his broad shoulders. “The shallow frivolity that consumes some of our acquaintance, one would think there was nothing of more importance happening in England.” 

Hester thought quickly, and decided that it would benefit neither of them to embark on a discussion of the momentous political dramas that Gareth was likely concerned with. Perhaps tomorrow morning, they could take a stroll in one of the less fashionable, and consequently less busy, London parks and she could probe a little more deeply into his frustration with the Ministry. For tonight, something to make him smile.

“Why, how untruthful of you, my love. Pretending to despise shallow frivolity, when I know better than anyone how pleased you are whenever Amanda comes to stay with us in the winter, and engages you in her, ah, delightful escapades--”

“Escapades! Mad romps I should call them, rather. Do you recall last November, when she persuaded half the ladies in the village that they should learn how to fire a pistol? And held an impromptu shooting-match in the apple orchard, just as Lord Mountebank’s hunting party came by?” 

Hester was already laughing. “And three of the young men fell from their horses in shock! Thankfully, none of them suffered any serious injury,” she recollected a little guiltily, stemming her own mirth. “And really, Miss Bailey gave a great account of herself with the rifle. It was foolish of Amanda to arrange such an improper event, but--oh, what a merry time it was.”

Finally divested of his outer garments, Gareth crossed the room to her chair and bent lovingly over her upturned face to drop a light kiss on her lips. 

Unconsciously, she leaned into him, helplessly happy for the moment. His fingers brushed hers, his gaze catching her own with a soft glow of peaceful contentment. He abruptly took her hand in his and raised it delicately to his lips, drawing her whole body fractionally nearer with the slightest effort. “Darling Hester,” he murmured. 

All at once she felt weightless, a giddy warm thrill rushing through her veins and tingling her skin where it was exposed to the air. 

Eight years of marriage, she thought to herself. And he still makes me feel like the blushing, youthful bride I never was. Were I a queen I could not feel more admired, more cherished. What would I say now, if I were a romantic character from one of Hildebrand’s stories. What elegant words and phrases could I command to tell him--let him know, how I--

“I always feel so comfortable with you, my dear. What a cheerful sight to come home to.”

She smiled lightly, and took his arm, rising from the chair. Her heart slowed its rapid pulse. All at once she felt tired. 

“So comfortable,” she said. 

*****

Alone, for what felt like the first time all day, Hester leant back against the bed-post and finally, sickeningly, allowed herself to think of the letter she had received from Amanda that morning. 

Why was she so sure, that this--this eventuality would never be a part of her life? True, it had been some years now since they were married, and the family physician has hinted, more than once, that she should prepare herself for disappointment. She did not feel like she was being cautious, however, or sensibly prepared for what would, or would not, come. 

It was more that a bone-deep certainty had descended upon her over the last few years by slow inches and was now simply a part of her being, inescapable. Like a tender and unrequited love for a dazzlingly brilliant man, which she was sure would never leave her. And it never had. 

I will never have his child, she told herself, practising the words. And I cannot make him hear it. Gareth faces the future with optimism and confidence. He always has, and why not? He has always been able to achieve what he wants through exercising his considerable talents and efforts. He will never accept this, or at least, not for a very long time to come. 

Hester closed her eyes and lingered for a few moments in that feeling, her left hand lightly tracing a nonsensical pattern at her throat. So, it is something for me to bear, she thought. And at least I have practice, with carrying this kind of weight. 

She looked down at the letter, and its joyful lines, fairly bursting from the page with suppressed excitement -- I am sure it will be a boy! Neil and I have already begun to imagine names, or at least I have prepared a list of very suitable names which I am sure he will be brought to accept soon enough, don’t you like Horatio? -- and felt lighter. It would be more than enough. Letters, and laughter, and campaigns for the future which was likely to contain a whole parcel of children, all fired up with Amanda’s energy and Neil’s strength, loud and demanding, frequently -- she made a silent declaration -- in and out of their house, loved as she could not bring herself to love her sister’s children. 

If there are girls, she thought, when they are older, I could invite them to live with me, some of the time. 

She breathed in once, twice, with a sharp and wet sound not entirely unlike a sob and then -- she walked to the little door in the far wall, knocked, and without waiting, opened it and stood, smiling fondly at her husband framed in the firelight. “Gareth,” she said cheerfully, “I had forgotten to tell you earlier, but I received a letter today -- there is the most delightful news come from Amanda”.


End file.
